Daniel and Rose Marie Glaze: Lessons to be learned

We were mildly amused at the following statement in the July 8 Times-Herald article on the delay of the Burton Bribery Case:

“The city has 26 Landscape Maintenance Districts (LMDs) which ‘allow residents’ living in the separate districts to fund sidewalk, playground, and park improvements,”

This sentence might be more aptly written: “The city has 26 Landscape Maintenance Districts (LMDs) which ‘allow city staff’ to tax homeowners and businesses in the districts to fund whatever work supervisors such as the (currently under arrest) Mr. Burton deem appropriate.”

Close cousins of the LMDs are Community Facilities Districts (CFDs) which, for example, “allow city staff” to tax Mare Island home and business owners to pay for:

• 100 percent of the operation and maintenance costs for the Causeway/Bridge connecting the mainland and the island.

• Police and fire services at about three times the rate as owners of similar homes on the mainland.

• The costs of all services provided by the city to the numerous (freeloading) federal facilities located on the island (e.g. Veterans Clinic, U.S. Forestry Service, U.S. Army Reserve Unit, and the U.S. Geological Survey).

Hopefully the Burton case will help city council members and senior Staff appreciate why LMD and CFD ratepayers frequently express concerns about how we are taxed and how the collected funds are spent — none of which are even mildly amusing.